


Buttercups

by DarkInuFan



Series: Blood of the Covenant is Thicker than Water of the Womb [3]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Breadmaking, Gen, Heavy handed analogy time, Hurt/Comfort, Potential Spoilers, The glamour reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29790318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkInuFan/pseuds/DarkInuFan
Summary: "you’re going to have to take off your rings. Unless you want to be picking out dough for the next week or so.” The purely decorative ones were the easiest. Big stones that he would use to flaunt his noble status, or pawn for some extra coin when funds were low. They were gifts from lovers, or part of his payment at the various courts he had attended to. The next was the signet ring that Letho gave him for his graduation at Oxenfurt. The Viper school medallion in miniature and spelled so that any letter sealed with it would find its way to Letho’s hands unmolested.The last one though, was the most difficult to remove. The inside was inscribed with runes that had held the glamor in place for the better part of the past 30 years.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion & Lambert
Series: Blood of the Covenant is Thicker than Water of the Womb [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2167566
Comments: 16
Kudos: 104





	Buttercups

**Author's Note:**

> This one has some references to past child abuse (in the form of exorcisms) and potential spoilers for the Nilfgaardian emperor. Please keep in mind, all my information comes from Netflix Witcher S1, going down Wiki rabbit holes and fellow authors. Thus, I may be wrong, but I'm probably not.

“Hey.” 

“Hey yourself. Snacks are over there.” 

“Oh.” Jaskier blinked, looking over at where Lambert had thumbed. “Thank you, but I was just wondering what you were doing in here so late.”

“Instead of being out there with the lovebirds, getting drunk?” Jaskier didn’t say anything, but he knew the statement was true. Which was a little odd to see, Eskel and Geralt being very obviously in love, and not in the ‘I’m getting laid tonight’ way. The way that they were just basking in the others’ presence after a season apart. “Prep work.” he finally answered, holding up his hands from where they were covered in a white powder. “It’s my turn to make bread for the week. I’m making the dough and proofing it tonight, then I’ll light the bread oven early tomorrow so that it’ll hopefully be done by the time breakfast rolls around.”

On the one hand, waking up  _ even earlier _ sounded horrendous, but on the other… “I’ve never made bread before.”

Lambert wasn’t surprised. Ciri hadn’t either. And by the time he was old enough, the nuns wouldn’t have trusted him in the kitchen, for fear of being stabbed or something equally ridiculous. “Wanna learn?”

Jaskier blinked as Lambert moved aside, gesturing to a giant wooden trough he had been working in front of. The planks had been worn smooth over time, from what he could see under the pile of flour Lambert had piled in the middle. “Uh… sure.” It looked… messy.

“Great. Roll up your sleeves and, ah… you’re going to have to take off your rings. Unless you  _ want _ to be picking out dough for the next week or so.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah.” That. Huh. That would be an issue.

“...You know what, here.” Lambert reached up and took off his medallion, slipping it off the chain before handing it over. “I’ll grab a spare chain later.”

Blinking, Jaskier looked down at the chain pooled in the palm of his hand. It was… surprisingly light, especially for how strong he knew it to be. Because they had to be, to survive the Path without breaking. “Thank you.” Now, he just had to take off his rings.

The purely decorative ones were the easiest. Big stones that he would use to flaunt his noble status, or pawn for some extra coin when funds were low. They were gifts from lovers, or part of his payment at the various courts he had attended to. The next was the signet ring that Letho gave him for his graduation at Oxenfurt. The Viper school medallion in miniature and spelled so that any letter sealed with it would find its way to Letho’s hands unmolested. 

The last one though, was the most difficult to remove. On the pinky of his left hand was a simple band in pure silver. It was delicate enough, it looked like a woman’s wedding band- and that’s what he had told anyone who asked: It was his mother’s. The inside, though, was inscribed with runes that had held the glamor in place for the better part of the past 30 years. 

“That one it?” Lambert asked, staring down at the ring, alongside Jaskier. “You can keep it on, if you need to. I won’t force you to break the glamor.”

“No.” Jaskier took a deep breath before starting to wriggle the nearly-too-tight band off. “It’s fine. I’ve taken it off before.” 

Every time he took it off, he always expected to  _ feel _ something. A breeze, a snap in his soul, a splash of cold water, but nothing. The only way that he could tell that the glamor was gone, was that his nails thickened and darkened slightly, and the old shackle marks around his wrists reappeared. 

Lambert looked him up and down, grinning and giving an impressed hum. “Gimme a smile.” He demanded, using his thumbs to push up both corners of Jaskier’s mouth, exposing his fangs. At the sight, Lambert gave an impressed whistle. “Lookit those chompers. I bet they’re bigger than Geralt’s.” 

Pulling away, Jaskier turned his face away and strung the glamor ring alongside the others and looped the chain around his neck. “What do you need me to do?”

“Huh. So does the glamor just make the changes look normal, or does it feel different too? ‘Cause you’re talking amazingly clearly. And here we all thought Geralt had issues talking around his fangs. But here you are, talking clear as a bell, and singing around them too.” Jaskier just really… didn’t want to think about it. It was actually his least favorite part from Oxenfurt: learning his diction. Learning how to speak with a neutral Common accent so as not to pin himself to a certain area, and to speak clearly around his fangs. It had taken a lot of work, but it was worth it in the end. His natural lisp was suppressed to nearly nothing. 

“I practice.” He murmured, intentionally stepping closer to the flour in the trough and started drawing in it with a finger. 

“...Ah.” Finally getting the hint. Lambert brought over the rest of what was needed for the bread and lined it up within easy reach. “You’re safe up here.” Lambert murmured, pouring the warmed milk into the flour and started to stir it with his off hand

Buttercup yellow eyes cut to Lambert as he started to help mix. “I know.” 

* * *

Quietly following along with Lambert’s instructions, soon they had a mass of dough that still somehow managed to look small in the trough, even though it seemed like it was half Ciri’s weight. Covering it with a damp cloth smeared with yet more flour, Jaskier couldn’t believe that the mass would double its volume as they slept, according to Lambert. In the morning, while the bread oven fire warmed the bricks, he would ‘pound down’ the dough and form the loaves. And this was only for the week, maybe a little more.

“Why don’t you just write down the recipe?” Jaskier asked, at one point, watching Lambert sprinkle fistfuls of flour into the mix at a time.

“Because there isn’t one.” He shrugged, poking at the lump, then grabbed a fistful and stretched it as far as he could before dropping it back down. “It’s always changing, depending on the weather. How the milk and eggs are. The grain of the flour.” He rolled a small ball, frowning at it before tossing in another handful of flour and massaged (he really couldn’t think of any other word to describe it) it into the dough. “Most alchemy’s the same way. You can do the exact same thing twice, with the same ingredients, but unless you use your instincts to make small changes in the formulae, most of the time it will fail.” 

Jaskier hummed. It made sense, really. Listening to your environment could make all the difference. It was the difference between tossed coins… or tossed moldy bread. “Toss some bread at your Witcher, oh mountain of plenty…” 

He didn’t realize that he had sung the line out loud until Lambert started cackling, flicking some flour at his face. It took a moment, but Jaskier laughed back, shaking the flour out of his hair.

As fortune would have it, that was the moment when his parents stumbled into the kitchen, one toward the snacks and the other just following along. “Thought you went to bed.” Eskel murmured, coming over and looking at the covered bread trough. “Helping Lambert with the bread, I see.” There was an amused note in his voice as he felt some tugging on his hair. “Though you look like you’re wearing some too. Or, hm… that’s not flour. Why haven’t I seen this before?” The gentle tugs on his hair and Jaskier knew exactly what Eskel had seen.

“I took my glamor off.” Jaskier made sure he wasn’t looking at Eskel. “I had that since I was nineteen. A sylvan hit me with an iron ball.”

“I didn’t know you were injured.” Geralt murmured, coming over with an apple in hand he had intended to eat.

“Yeah, well, you were dealing with your own concussion. Tell me again,  _ how many times  _ did you headbutt someone that day? I watched you walking up to Roach before you managed to get in the saddle. Your eyes weren’t exactly focused.”

“Is that why you followed me?” 

“The mighty Witcher, felled by falling off a cliff. Not exactly the most _riveting_ of tales.” The sarcasm was strong with this one. 

“That also why you kept prodding at me that night?” He felt a different tug at his hair, from slimmer but no less strong hands. Geralt’s hands.

“We both had concussions. One of us had to make sure the other survived the night.”

“I would have been fine.” Geralt inspected the singular lock of white hair on the side of Jaskier’s head. “You would have been too.” 

“Yes, but neither of us knew that about each other at the time, now did we?” Jaskier forgot himself and looked at Geralt, locking sunshine yellow with gold. 

A sharp inhale told him that he fucked up, and that it was too late to hide them now. Starting to turn back away, Geralt grabbed his chin. “Let me see.” Putting the apple down absently, Geralt used both his hands to frame Jaskier’s face, inspecting it closely. The face itself looked no different than he had at nineteen. That he looked, at a stretch, no older than twenty-five shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but somehow it did. His thumbs brushed the un-wrinkled corners of his eyes before he brought their heads close enough to touch foreheads briefly before he kissed Jaskier's. “Buttercups.” Geralt snorted, as if finally getting a joke. 

Continuing his inspection, Geralt’s expression fell as his eyes landed on his neck. Jaskier knew what he would find: Silvered stretch marks from when the Djinn nearly took his livelihood, if not his life. With a high-pitched whine, his thumb traced one of the marks, pressing just enough to feel how thin the skin had been stretched.

“He’s fine.” Eskel traced Geralt’s shoulders, holding him back or up, he didn’t know. “He survived and he can still talk.”

“Yeah, see, I’m fine.” Jaskier grinned, giving Geralt’s wrist a squeeze. Though, instead of reassuring him, it instead brought his attention to the scarring that encircled both his wrists.

“When did this happen?” Eskel asked, tracing the raised pink scarring over older silvered scars.

“Yeah… those look a bit… fresher than they should.” Lambert had seen them earlier, but hadn’t asked, since he had known those particular scars for as long as he had known the boy, along with a series of round burn scars over his solar plexus the size of coins. Lasting reminders of the nuns’ attempts to ‘burn the demon out of the boy’. 

“Hmm?” Jaskier had to look at his wrists himself before remembering that, oh, he hadn’t told them about his Nilfgaard trip. “Oh. Nilfgaard.” Movement out the corner of his eye had him shimmying backwards before he realized that it was Geralt that lunged and gave him a tight-mouthed look. “I didn’t tell them anything, Geralt. Especially about Ciri. I’m not stupid.”

“Then how the fuck did you get shackled?” Instead of becoming defensive, Jaskier forced himself into a casual pose, perching on the end of the table and conveniently just out of immediate reach from the full Witchers in the room.

“Funny that. It’s actually part of what I needed to tell you I learned while down there. Turns out, Emperor Emhyr var Emreis recognized me from Pavetta’s betrothal feast. That’s why I was arrested. That you saved his life was why he spared mine, despite me telling him that I hadn’t seen you in over a year, and had no intention to seek you out.” Jaskier crossed his arms and shrugged at the blatant lie before locking eyes with Geralt. “We knew him when he had a different name though: Duny.”

Geralt breathed through that revelation, thinking through what Jaskier said before deciding on what to say. “Pavetta?” 

“Really did die when the ship sank. It wasn’t a storm that did it, though there was one that happened that day.”

“Then Ciri should be with her father.” 

Jaskier snarled, his fingers digging into his arms as he held himself back from lunging, his fangs flashing at Geralt in a clear threat. “Not in your fucking life! She’s  _ your _ responsibility, Geralt.” He paced a small circle before snarling at Geralt again. “Stop running away from your responsibilities. Do you know what that sick bastard wants to do to her?” Jaskier threw his hand back, vaguely gesturing toward the south. “Because of some  _ prophecy _ he heard as a kid, he wants to marry her, Geralt. He wants to, and I quote, ‘ _ beget an heir from her _ .’” He spat on the floor, even relating that small piece of information leaving a rotten taste in his mouth. 

“And you want to know the best part about all this?” Jaskier’s laugh was borderline hysterical. “Was that the only reason I’m not sitting there, rotting in some Nilfgaardian rathole, is that Duny- sorry, Emhyr- wanted me to pass along that exact message. So,  _ there you go _ . Take it how you will. You either  _ do your fucking job and take care of her _ , or give her to that monster just barely contained in human skin.” Jaskier sighed. “I’m going to bed.”

Not going to sleep. He didn’t think any of them were going to sleep that night, with that bit of news hanging like a fresh kill over all their heads. 

“Want me to come get you in the morning?” Lambert asked, the most neutral of the group, for once.

“Yeah, sure.” Jaskier waved him off, suddenly tired as he smothered a yawn. “Hey, Princess.” he gave Ciri a tired smile, turning her around and wrapping his arm around her shoulders to escort them both up to their bedrooms. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised that she had eavesdropped at least part of the conversation.

“...Jaskier?”

“Yes, Princess?”

“Is that why they killed Grandmother and Grandfather Eist? And why the man with the winged helmet chased me?” 

Jaskier, too tired to soothe a lost child, gave her a hug instead, as tight as she could handle. “You belong here, with Geralt, and I will kill anyone who says otherwise with my lute strings. Duny, your biological father, is crazy, and his actions are in no way your responsibility, despite what you may think. At this point, I think that they were just another death in his eyes. Just another kingdom to destroy on his crusade north. Your job now, is to live the best life that you can and damn what he thinks.”

Making it up to the corridor that held their bedrooms, Jaskier shivered at the sudden draft, whether it was real or imagined. “Here, I don’t want to sleep alone. Do you want to cuddle with me tonight?”

“Yes, please.”

“Thank you.” He didn’t exactly know if he was thanking her for not leaving him alone, or for understanding, but either way, he kissed the crown of her head before shuffling her into his bedroom and under the covers.

A couple of hours later, a quiet knock came upon his door before it opened on near-silent hinges. “You still want to help with the bread?” Lambert whispered. He had changed his shirt since the previous night, but that didn’t say much.

“Yeah, give me a moment.” true to his thoughts, Jaskier hadn’t slept a wink, though he did float in that half-aware grey area that wasn’t quite a true meditation, but let his body still get the rest it needed. Ciri hadn’t slept either, but nor had she moved once Jaskier had wrapped his protective arms around her hours before. Pulling away, he gave Ciri’s head a single stroke as she resettled into the warm spot Jaskier left behind. It took only a minute for Jaskier to scrub his face with cold water and change his shirt for the new day. It was odd, feeling the row of rings hanging from a chain and thump against his chest as he moved, but it was a feeling he could get used to. 

Getting down to the kitchen, Lambert studied Jaskier’s face in the light of the fire before giving him a hug reminiscent of what he had given Ciri last night. Pulling away, he moved on like it didn’t happen before pointing out the bread oven and instructing him how to light the fire so that it would warm the stones properly while he started to prepare the loaves from the giant mass that the dough had grown to overnight.

“So, you know how to kill someone with your lute strings, huh?” Lambert said, shaping a loaf between his hands before setting it aside with the others.

“...What?” Jaskier wasn’t quite awake, despite not having actually slept.

Lambert hummed to himself before nodding. “I’ll teach you, then. Maybe Ciri too. She has to learn how to stand up for herself and make her own decisions some time, right?”

“...Yeah. I guess so.” Jaskier’s loaves were a bit lumpy in places, the smooth skin on top cracked and lopsided, but it was the best damn bread he had ever tasted in his life. Because he made it.

**Author's Note:**

> At breakfast, Vesemir saw Jaskier's eyes and grunted in approval, intentionally digging through the basket of rolls for one of the lopsided ones. "You have flour in your hair."


End file.
